No Limits
Austin at the Toronto International Film Festival
By Marjorie Baumgarten, Fri., Sept. 22, 2006
When the People's Choice votes at this year's Toronto International Film Festival were tallied, University of Texas graduate Alejandro Gomez Monteverde's Bella was deemed the audience favorite. The writer-director's quiet, independently made movie, with script contributions by sometime Austinite Patrick Million, rose to the top with seemingly little buzz but obviously great audience rapport. Starring the Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui, whose smoldering looks are hidden behind a bushy facial beard, and Tammy Blanchard, the movie unfolds primarily over the course of one day, during which the two become acquainted and share intimate secrets.
The second runner-up for the People's Choice award also has Austin connections. It's Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, a documentary presentation of the uproar that arose from Natalie Maines' misconstrued statement on the eve of America's re-entry into Iraq. Kopple, the Oscar-winning director of Harlan County, USA, and Peck follow the downslide in the band's popularity, which had, until that point, been the bestselling female group in history. The filmmakers manage to fashion their film into an acutely observed study of American values while also keeping an eye on an evolutionary process that finds the Chicks further maturing into women.
Another score for area filmmaking was the Weinstein Company's pickup during the festival of the clever teen horror film, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which was shot in the Bastrop area. The Midnight Madness film maintains a well-tempered balance between impeding calamity and knowing humor to make it one of the standout genre pictures of the festival. Summercamp!, by Austin-based director Bradley Beesley (Okie Noodling) and Sarah Price (SXSW award winner Caesar's Park), is another film with local ties that screened during the festival. The documentary was profiled in the Chronicle when it premiered at this year's SXSW.
Other local connections in Toronto include the screening of the other Truman Capote film Infamous, which filmed in Austin last year. Equally strong as Capote, it's astonishing to think that Doug McGrath's film might garner awards for Brit actor Toby Jones' portrayal of the author. Jones' performance is so good that it's not in the least bit distracting that Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar just last year for playing the same person. Although the film covers much the same time period as Capote, Infamous places more emphasis on the author's homosexuality. The next James Bond, Daniel Craig, plays the killer, Perry Smith, while Sandra Bullock effectively portrays Harper Lee. Delightful turns by Sigourney Weaver as socialite Babe Paley and Peter Bogdanovich as Bennett Cerf add to the film's allure.
The most exciting film I saw in Toronto was former resident Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. Filmed in much the same tone as his haunting Devil's Backbone, del Toro's new one is even edgier and more imaginative. It leaps from the former's ghost-story structure to that of a fairy tale, albeit one that is punctured by historical factors, harsh realities, and fantastic grotesqueries. Rarely has the borderline between reality and fantasy been so finely drawn and crossed. Its violence is truly horrific, while its fantasies are mind-bending. Pan's Labyrinth announces del Toro as a director at the top of his game.
Throughout the week, no matter where I wandered in Toronto, signs of Austin would catch my senses. It might have been at an industry panel on alternative distribution, where the showcased speakers were 51 Birch Street filmmaker Doug Block and his Austin-based producer Lori Cheatle. Their documentary, which also screened at SXSW and debuted at Toronto last year, has been picked up for release by IFC's Truly Indie outfit. Or who better than Spoon's Britt Daniel to be one of the music coordinators of Marc Forster's strange new film Stranger Than Fiction, which stars Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Queen Latifah. The sounds of our town stretch far and wide.
I was never more aware of that fact than when flying home from Toronto at the end of the week on Friday, the first day of the Austin City Limits Festival. The Austin-Bergstrom Airport was clogged to an extent I had never seen before. The traffic was so heavy it took more than an hour to collect my luggage and a cab. The wait allowed me time to hang out with the gone-but-still-vital presence of Barbara Jordan at her statue near the baggage claim area. We commiserated the passing of Ann Richards. The Texas film industry had no greater advocate than Richards. She would have been emboldened but unsurprised by the Lone Star shining so brightly up north – or anywhere else. 
